“No, of course not. He would appear to have been a very good friend to both you and Amy. You said she would be safe with him. Safe from what? Did someone threaten her?”
“She started to grow up,” said Florian simply. “And she was pretty. Absalom adopted her to keep them from selling her to a Flash House, but the chals—er, the young men, were always fighting over which one would buy her for his wife. She would have none of them, and she has her little knife, but Absalom was often away, and they gave her no peace. She caused much trouble, and by the law of the tribe, sooner or later she would have been forced to take one of them for her mate. So Absalom bought her out of the tribe and they came here to live.”
“They live here?” Glendenning looked around at the stark chamber, the few pieces of rickety furniture, the single window high up in the cold rock wall. “Good God!”
The youth smiled mirthlessly. “This is a fine place for such as us, sir. It is dry, and there is another room we use for a kitchen, and where Absalom sleeps when he’s here.”
“’Tis a blasted ruin! It was the cellar of some old house, I’ll warrant.”
“Yes. The main part of the house was on the hill. It burned down long ago, and was abandoned. Nobody comes here now because it is said to be haunted. But this cellar is partly below ground, and quite hidden away, and we built a fireplace, so it’s not too cold in winter.”
“And why are you here now? Did the Cranfords turn you off?”
“I hope not, milord. Amy can write.” He said it as though it rated a twenty-one gun salute, and, quite aware of the effort that must have gone into such an achievement, Glendenning said gravely that he thought that splendid. The youth beamed, and went on. “She sent a letter saying that Absalom was ill, and she couldn’t manage. So I had to come. He is better now, and will be off, and I must go back.” His teeth flashed in a white grin. “Mr. Peregrine Cranford cannot go along without me, you see.”
Glendenning stared at him. “What d’you mean? Where will Absalom be off to?”
“He’ll be off about his business,” growled Absalom, coming in the door holding a bulging sack. “And you need not be thinking as ye can—”
“What’s all this?” Following him in, Amy frowned. “You shouldn’t be up so soon, lordship! Florian, I told ye plain—”
“You see?” said Florian, laughing. “Good-bye, milord. Good-bye Ab. I’m away!” He seized Amy, gave her a quick kiss, and was gone.
“Wait, ye young care-for-nobody!” Absalom thrust the sack at Amy, and hurried after Florian.
Amy eyed the viscount anxiously. “How are you this morning? You must be fair daft to—” She faltered, and smoothed her windblown hair, her cheeks becoming pink. “Why d’ye stare at me so?”
Yesterday, after she had dressed the infected wound above his right ankle, he had been exhausted and had slept most of the rest of the day away. With the instinctive reaction he’d developed when he’d been a hunted fugitive, at some time during the night a faint sound had jerked him awake. Moonlight had been flooding through the upper window, and by its soft radiance he had seen Amy creep in, wearing a long white nightgown daintily embroidered with tiny flowers and butterflies. Her long hair hung like a shining mantle about her shoulders, and she had watched him warily, very obviously ready to take flight if he showed any sign of wakefulness. Afraid of frightening her away, he had feigned sleep while she crept closer. He’d felt her cool fingers on his cheek, then she had cautiously pulled the blanket higher about him. When he’d opened his eyes, she was gone.
In his half-dazed state she had seemed as if surrounded by a glow, and he’d thought her angelically lovely. In the cold light of day, he decided that illness and moonlight had clouded his common sense. Amy was indeed beautiful, but there was little of the spiritual about her. She had a bold and challenging way of looking at one; her skirts were of a length Lady Nola would certainly judge vulgar, revealing as they did her ankles (very neat ankles one must admit); and what angel went with a knife in her garter and did not scruple to whip it out with not a vestige of modesty? And what an ungrateful wretch to be criticising her when she had cared for him!
“My apologies an I was staring,” he said humbly. “You are very lovely, Amy. And you’ve been more than kind to me.”
She smiled and began to remove the contents of the sack. “We prigged yer purse, don’t forget. Look at this! Two fine hens for dinner!”
He glanced at the hens disinterestedly. They were plump birds, already plucked and dressed. “I retrieved my purse,” he pointed out. “You had spent very little.”
She took out a loaf of bread. “Didn’t waste no time counting it, eh? Just as well. Never can tell what thieving gypsies will do!”
“Do not bristle. Certainly, I have caused you to buy more food. You must let me help with your expenses.”
“Lor’,” she said, her mouth curving scornfully. “Don’t you never think o’ nothing else? I don’t want yer silly money!” She saw the amused upward twitch of his dark brows, and before he could make the obvious comment, she added, “I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t know ye when I—borrowed yer purse. Besides, that were business. I don’t take money from folks I knows.”
“You mean from friends, which is quite proper. Even so, you must be sensible. You cannot afford to buy extra—”
“Extra—what? I ain’t bought noth—anything.”
He grinned. “Thank you. ‘Anything’ is better than ‘nothing.’”
“Yes, ’tis. So ye can enjoy yer dinner, ’cause if I hadn’t of prigged them cacklers you’d have nothing!”
“What? You never did?” Dismayed, he reached out and caught her wrist. “Do you know you could be transported for stealing two hens?”
She laughed and danced away, saying pertly, “They got to catch me first. Can’t transport what ye cannot catch, eh, me noble lord?”
“Keep on like this and soon or late they will catch you! Surely you understand that, quite apart from punishment or whether or not they catch you, what you did is wrong. You took something belonging to someone else. Someone who may need it more than you do.”
Her smile died, to be replaced by a stormy look. “La, how the aristo doth preach,” she jeered, slamming the hens back into the sack again. “They couldn’t need it more’n me, because they’d got it, and I didn’t!” Taking up the sack, scowling darkly at him, her face flamed. “And don’t you never look at me so high and mighty. Lor’, but you’d think as I’d murdered someone!”
With her upbringing, poor chit, how could he blame her? “I suppose,” he began, “you have never been taught—”
“Then you can s’pose again! And don’t be thinking as I’m a iggerant gypsy trollop!”
“As if I would! Do not say such things!”
“You says I ain’t been taught,” she said fiercely. “Ye think I cannot do nothing—don’t know nothing! Well, I can do things! All kinds o’ things what you couldn’t do! Like … like finding food when there ain’t none. And getting fires to burn when the wood’s wet. And how to turn a shirt so it’ll last twice as long; and how much to pay them as asks five times what they ought for a loaf of bread!”
‘Poor little creature,’ he thought. ‘What a dreadful life she has led.’ And he asked gently. “How much would you pay them, Amy?”
At once the flashing eyes were softened by mirth. A dimple peeped, and she said mischievously, “Nothing, of course! I’d prig the loaf.” Her amusement faded. “And there ye go, looking down yer nose at me! Well, I’d like to see yer fine ladies go on living without no roofs over their heads, or if there wasn’t no one to wait on ’em hand and hoof, and kiss their—” She saw Glendenning’s covert grin and broke off, biting her lip. Before he could comment, however, she went on proudly. “I can write, too! Writ a letter I did! And sent it off! And I can read! Look here…!” With a swirl of skirts she ran to the piled crates where were her brush and comb and the little mirror. She pulled open a makeshift door on a lower crate,
revealing several books neatly propped with a brick. She took out a much worn and dog-eared Bible and flew back to flourish it under Glendenning’s nose. “Open it! Go on! Open it anywhere, and I’ll read it!”
“Amy, my dear child, I did not mean—”
With an exclamation of impatience she opened the Bible, closed her eyes, and stabbed a finger at the page. “There! Now ye cannot say as I chose a bit I knows by heart.” She bent her head and began to read slowly and with a painful care that he thought ineffably touching.
“‘Let him that stoled steal no more, but ray—ra-ther … let him … la-bour—’” Belatedly, the meaning of the words dawned on her. Moaning, she stopped reading.
Glendenning struggled to contain his hilarity.
Amy lay down the Bible, put both hands over her face, then peeped at him from between her fingers.
He was undone, and shouted with laughter. “If ever … I saw justice … meted out.”
She tried to keep a sober face, but his mirth was contagious and soon her clear peals were mingling with his deeper laugh. How it came about, she could not have told, but somehow she was perched on his knee, his arm around her waist.
“Well now, Mistress Consett,” he said. “And are you properly chastised?”
She smiled into his laughing face. “Ye won that hand, all right.”
“Perhaps. But although you were hoist with your own petard, you proved your point, ma’am. You can read. Your uncle warrants a medal for teaching you so well.”
Her eyes searched his face. She said with sudden desperate intensity, “Ye ain’t a’mocking of me, lordship? Did I read it right?”
“You did indeed.”
“Ah, but I made mistakes, didn’t I?” She sighed, and said disconsolately, “‘Stoled’ didn’t sound just right, and I said ‘rather’ wrong at first.”
“Yes. But you corrected yourself.”
She sprang up, and said passionately, “If only I knowed how to read better!”
“‘Knew,’ pretty one. Not ‘knowed.’”
“There! You see! But ’tis cruel hard. There’s so much to learn!”
“For all of us, child. Only look at me. You are perfectly right. I may know how to read, and—”
“And how to talk proper. And ye can talk other languages, I wouldn’t wonder. Like—like French, and Latin?”
“Very little Latin, I’m afraid. And had I been obliged to face life’s hard knocks as you have, much good would French and Latin have done me!”
“You’re just being kind. You knows I’m iggerant.”
Fascinated by her swift changes of mood, and by the vitality that seemed to radiate from her, he argued, “Nothing of the sort! You have a quick mind, that is very evident, and would learn quickly if—”
“Aye, if ye’d help me. Oh, sir! Would ye? Please? If I could speak nicer, I’d be able to sell me wares to better places. P’raps get a stall somewhere.”
Curious, he asked, “What d’you mean, Mistress Amy? Do you sew, perhaps? I noticed that pretty night—” Too late, he cut off the words.
“Oh!” She stared at him in horror. “Ye was awake! And spying on me in me nightrail!” A wave of crimson swept up the white column of her throat, and pressing a tanned hand to her blazing cheek, she scolded, “Oh, but ye’re a wicked young man, I think!”
Absalom came back in, saying stridently, “Ain’t I told ye, lass? All the Quality coves be the same. Grinding folks like you and me under their boots, and thinking as they’ve the right to bed any woman, be she decent or no, so long as she ain’t one o’ their own.”
“Stuff,” said Glendenning, whose head was beginning to pound once more. “In the first place, I doubt you’ve ever been ground under anyone’s heel—or God help him, you’d have properly stung him! In the second place, I never in my life knew of any well-bred gentleman—er, bedding a woman who was unwilling. And in the third place, you should not use such terms in front of your niece!”
“I’ll use a few terms in a minute, I will,” snorted Absalom. “Terms like—hop off, quick like!” He advanced on the viscount belligerently. “You think I ain’t seen ye making sheep’s eyes at my Amy? Go back to yer castles and yer hundreds o’ servants what’s waiting to grovel when ye snaps yer fingers! Yer perishing lordship ain’t wanted here!”
“Now, Uncle Absalom,” began Amy.
Glendenning clung to the edge of the table and dragged himself up. “If you imply that I would take advantage of Miss Consett—”
“I don’t imply it, mate,” snarled Absalom. “I says it. Straight out. Go back where—”
“He cannot go anywhere yet,” interposed Amy. “See how ill he looks! Come, milord.” She handed Glendenning his cane, and taking his other arm began to help him back toward the bed. “’Tis no use grumbling, dear old Ab. He ain’t really better yet, and if you keep quarreling with him, we’ll likely have him in a fever again and he’ll be here longer than ever.”
Glendenning protested that he did not want to lie down again, but he was overruled, and he settled with inward relief onto the bed. He lay listening drowsily while Absalom argued that they should have left yesterday and that he wouldn’t hear of leaving his little girl alone with the evil aristocrat. Fleetingly, it occurred to the evil aristocrat that he had neither contacted Hector Kadenworthy about the duel, nor run his elusive brother to earth. Thinking on those matters, he fell asleep.
* * *
Lord Hector Kadenworthy, having inherited great wealth at an early age, had been toad-eaten for most of his three and thirty years, and with few exceptions found his fellow man a dead bore. To those he loved he showed a lively sense of humour, kindness, and unfailing generosity, but those he loved were few, and he was more universally held to be a man of chilly demeanour and sharp tongue.
The latter qualities were in full force on this rainy afternoon as he sat at the desk in his study inspecting a pair of superb cannon-barrelled turn-off pistols, and ignoring the man who watched and waited and smiled.
As though suddenly recalling the presence of this patient individual, Kadenworthy raised his hard brown eyes and drawled, “Your pardon, Mr.—er, Farrier, but I fail to see why the theft of my mother’s emeralds should be of concern to the Horse Guards.”
Burton Farrier leaned back in his chair and rested the tips of the fingers of both hands together. “The Kadenworthy emeralds are famous, my lord,” he said in his soft, purring voice. “That any of our noble families should be victimized by so daring a—er, robbery is, naturally enough, of interest to my superiors.”
Replacing one pistol in its case, Kadenworthy took up the other and, admiring it, appeared again to forget his visitor.
Farrier watched him, eyes expressionless, smile unwavering.
After a long pause, Kadenworthy said idly, “You cannot know how relieved I am to learn that my government employs its best operatives to track down malefactors. In view of the number of rank riders upon the highways, your life must be a busy one. How many of the ruffians have you brought to book?”
“Alas, sir. I have given you a false impression. My work ceases when the missing jewels are—er, shall we say—found?”
Kadenworthy sighted along the silver-mounted barrel, turning the pistol until it pointed steadily between Mr. Farrier’s eyes. “Shall we say you are aware that our gems were recovered?”
Undismayed by the aim of that deadly muzzle, Farrier separated his ‘steeple,’ then tapped it back together again. “We are aware that some gems were recovered, my lord.”
Kadenworthy lowered the pistol. “I do not know what devious ploy brings you here, Farrier, but that you spend your time being of assistance to your countrymen I find as suspect as that damned grin of yours. Do you imply that the jewels we recovered are not the Kadenworthy emeralds?”
Mr. Farrier sighed, and looked sad. “Unhappily, my lord, it is believed the jewels your agents took from the fence may be very clever copies of your property.” The smile reasserted itself. “Since I am expert i
n such matters, I have been assigned the task of confirming their authenticity.”
His lordship replaced the pistol in its velvet-lined case, closed the lid, and rose. For a moment he stood there, looking at Farrier, who had sprung to his feet.
“Unless, of course,” purred Farrier, “you would for some reason, object, sir?”
“I would have a perfect right to object, I believe.”
“Oh, absolutely. People are usually quite anxious to be sure of the value of their belongings, however. The last estate I visited, Ward Marching— I believe you are acquainted with Sir Peter Ward?”
Not by a flicker did his lordship’s expression change. He said coolly, “Sir Peter Ward is a friend of mine. Am I to infer he also has been robbed?”
“A thwarted attempt, fortunately. We had reason to suspect it might have been linked to the fact that an escaped Jacobite was known to be in the vicinity of Ward Marching a year or two since…”
Standing very still, Kadenworthy said nothing, but one eyebrow lifted in faintly bored enquiry.
“For a while, in fact,” went on Farrier, “the traitor was thought to have broken into the house. Ah, but how forgetful I am! I tell you what you already know, for you were among the guests that night, no? You and … Trevelyan de Villars.”
How benign the smile. How soft the voice. But his lordship’s nerves tightened, and his neatly powdered head lifted a trace higher. He raised his quizzing glass and through it directed a level stare at his visitor. “And a couple of hundred other guests. Damme, Farrier, but one might almost suppose you to have been sticking your nose into my appointment book. If you knew of my presence at the Ward Marching Midsummer Ball, you must also be aware that Mr. Trevelyan de Villars and I went out the previous year, and that he came curst near to killing me.”
“I’d heard he is a deadly man with a sword. Thank heaven you survived the encounter, my lord. And may I remark that one can only admire you for later treating him with such magnanimity. A most admirable example of, ah—restraint.”
Had We Never Loved Page 8
